If you could have only one dress, wouldn't you make it a black one?
Glamorous or modest, seductive or practical, chic and versatile, elegant, powerful, modern, and never out of style, the black dress has been the foundation of a woman's wardrobe for centuries. The allure of the black dress has captured the imagination of generations of couturiers and artists and served as the signature of society's most enviably dressed women.
The Black Dress is a lush visual celebration of this fashion classic. With an essay and images selected by Dr. Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, this volume features page after uniquely designed page of some of the most compelling dresses in the history of fashion. The diverse imagery includes fine art, runway shots and design sketches, stills from classic films and vintage fashion plates, and, above all, gorgeous evocations of the black dress from the world's greatest designers, illustrators, and photographers. These include paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, and John Signer Sargent; illustrations by Georges Barbier and Ruben Toledo; and iconic images of movie goddesses such as Audrey Hepburn and Rita Hayworth.
The world's foremost fashion designers, from Coco Chanel to Christian Dior, Yohji Yamamoto to Boudicca, are featured in full color throughout, their designs accompanied by quotes on black from writers, artists and fashion personalities. Extended captions at the back of the book provide details one ach dress and its place in fashion history.

The Black Dress

Arts & Photography

Steele, Valerie

Graphic Design

Harper

The traditional image of the Victorian woman presents her as strait-laced and prudish, her clothing an outward sign of her sexual repression and exploitation. This situation supposedly persisted until the Women's Rights Movement and World War I forced the world to acknowledge that women were liberated individuals with legs. Yet Valerie steele demonstrates that eroticism formed the basis for the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty and fashion--indeed, that the concepts of beauty and fashion are essentially erotic. She shows that, far from being passive "sex objects," Victorian women, like their modern counterparts, themselves chose to emulate an erotic ideal as an aspect of their own self-fulfillment. Even the notorious corset was neither fetishistic nor an unhealthy instrument of torture, she argues, although its comlex and ambivalent sexual symbolism aroused controversy. Fashion and Eroticism shows how the New Look of "sexy" modern naturally from within the pre-war world of fashion and not as part of an intifashion movement. Steele's conclusions are based on prodigious documentary evidence, including visual and material research, in costume collections in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and even Japan. Fashiona and Eroticism is not only a radical revision of the Conventional understanding of Victorian fashion; it is a major contribution to the histyory of women and sexuality. About the Author: Valerie steele received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1983, and was the 1984 First Ladies' Fellow at the Division of Costume, National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution.

Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era Through the Jazz Age

Oxford University Press

Paris Fashion: A Cultural History

Paris has been the international capital of style for over three hundred years. In this provocative and richly illustrated volume, Valerie Steele--author of the highly acclaimed Fashion and Eroticism--offers a penetrating social and cultural analysis of fashion in Paris. More than just a history of famous designers and changing styles, the book is about fashion as a cultural ideal and a social phenomenon. Steele explains why Paris was the center of fashion for so long, providing brilliant insight into the concept of "style" and the significance of fashion in modern society. Just as Fashion and Eroticism radically revised the stereotype of "prudish" Victorian dress, so also does Paris Fashion debunk many long-standing myths about the fashion industry. Steele shows that the "great names" of fashion, from Worth to Dior, were not so much "dictators" or radical innovators as they were astute barometers of fashion trends, and that, contrary to popular belief, Coco Chanel was not the first great woman designer, but rather one of a very long line of women who influenced the world of fashion. Both the French belief in the innate national "genius" of their couturiers and the equally popular idea that American women finally smashed the "dictatorship" of Parisian men are shown to be incorrect. While focusing primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Steele also traces the early history of fashion, from the cities of Renaissance Italy to the courts of Burgundy and Versailles, and the streets of Revolutionary Paris. She explores the "geography of fashion" in Second Empire Paris, showing how the new boulevards, cafés, and theaters vastly expanded the stage for the public display of fashion. Steele excels at revealing how fashion has been portrayed in the work of great French writers and artists, with fascinating chapters on the role of fashion in Balzac's novels--Balzac himself was usually horribly dressed--and how Proust dwelled on the "mute language of clothes." "The Black Prince of Elegance," Steele's analysis of dandyism in the life and work of Baudelaire, illuminates the changing meaning of men's dark apparel in the era of high capitalism, while her study of fashion and art provides a new way of looking at Impressionism and modernism as an artistic vision. By focusing on a "case study" of Paris, Steele shows how the clothing we wear today continues to express the way we see the world and ourselves.

History & Criticism

Kinky boots, corsets, underwear as outerwear, second-skin garments of rubber and leather, uniforms, body piercing.... Today everything from a fetishist's dream appears on the fashion runways. Although some people regard fetish fashion as exploitative and misogynistic, others interpret it as a positive Amazonian statement--couture Catwoman. But the connection between fashion and fetishism goes far beyond a few couture collections. For the past thirty years, the iconography of sexual fetishism has been increasingly assimilated into popular culture. Before Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, there was Mrs. Peel, heroine of the 1960s television show "The Avengers," who wore a black leather catsuit modeled on a real fetish costume. Street styles like punk and the gay "leatherman" look also testify to the influence of fetishism. The concept of fetishism has recently assumed a growing importance in critical thinking about the cultural construction of sexuality. Yet until now no scholar with an in-depth knowledge of fashion history has studied the actual clothing fetishes themselves. Nor has there been a serious exploration of the historical relationship between fashion and fetishism, although erotic styles have changed significantly and "sexual chic" has become increasingly conspicuous. Cultural historian Valerie Steele has devoted much of her career to the study of the relationship between clothing and sexuality, and is uniquely qualified to write this book. Marshalling a dazzling array of evidence from pornography, psychology, and history, as well as interviews with individuals involved in sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and cross-dressing, Steele illuminates the complex relationship between appearance and identity. Based on years of research, her book Fetish: Fashion, Sex &amp; Power explains how a paradigm shift in attitudes toward sex and gender has given rise to the phenomenon of fetish fashion. "Steele is to fetish dressing what Anne Rice is to vampires," writes Christa Worthington of Elle magazine, "the intellectual interpreter of...wishes beyond our ken." According to Steele, fetishism shows how human sexuality is never just a matter of doing what comes naturally; fantasy always plays an important role. Steele provides provocative answers to such questions as: Why is black regarded as the sexiest color? Is fetishizing the norm for males? Does fetish fashion reflect a fear of AIDS? And why do so many people love shoes?

Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power

History

World

Kinky boots, corsets, underwear as outerwear, second-skin garments of rubber and leather, uniforms, body piercing. . . . Today everything from a fetishist's dream appears on the fashion runways. Although some people regard fetish fashion as exploitative and misogynistic, others interpret it as a positive Amazonian statement-couture Catwoman. But the connection between fashion and fetishism goes far beyond a few couture collections. For the past thirty years, the iconography of sexual fetishism has been increasingly assimilated into popular culture. Before Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, there was Mrs. Peel, heroine of the 1960s television show "The Avengers," who wore a black leather catsuit modeled on a real fetish costume. Street styles like punk and the gay "leatherman" look also testify to the influence of fetishism. The concept of fetishism has recently assumed a growing importance in critical thinking about the cultural construction of sexuality. Yet until now no scholar with an in-depth knowledge of fashion history has studied the actual clothing fetishes themselves. Nor has there been a serious exploration of the historical relationship between fashion and fetishism, although erotic styles have changed significantly and "sexual chic" has become increasingly conspicuous. Cultural historian Valerie Steele has devoted much of her career to the study of the relationship between clothing and sexuality, and is uniquely qualified to write this book. Marshalling a dazzling array of evidence from pornography, psychology, and history, as well as interviews with individuals involved in sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and cross-dressing, Steele illuminates the complex relationship between appearance and identity. Based on years of research, her book Fetish: Fashion, Sex &amp; Power explains how a paradigm shift in attitudes toward sex and gender has given rise to the phenomenon of fetish fashion. "Steele is to fetish dressing

Asia

China Chic: East Meets West

MAJOR, JOHN S.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Yale Univ Pr

The Corset: A Cultural History

The corset is probably the most controversial garment in the history of fashion. Although regarded as an essential element of fashionable dress from the Renaissance into the twentieth century, the corset was also frequently condemned as an instrument of torture and the cause of ill health. Why did women continue to don steel and whalebone corsets for four hundred years? And why did they finally stop? This lavishly illustrated book offers fascinating and often surprising answers to these questions. Valerie Steele, one of the world’s most respected fashion historians, explores the cultural history of the corset, demolishing myths about this notorious garment and revealing new information and perspectives on its changing significance over the centuries. Whereas most historians have framed the history of the corset in terms of oppression vs. liberation and fashion vs. health and comfort, Steele contends that women’s experiences of corsetry varied considerably and cannot be fully understood within these narrow frames. Drawing on extensive research in textual, visual, and materials sources, the author disproves the beliefs that the corset was dangerously unhealthy and was designed primarily for the oppression of women. Women persisted in wearing corsetsdespite powerful male authorities trying to dissuade thembecause corsetry had positive connotations of social status, self-discipline, youth, and beauty. In the twentieth century the garment itself fell out of fashion but, Steele points out, it has become internalized as women replace the boned corset with diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. The book concludes with insightful analyses of such recent developments as the reconception of the corset as a symbol of rebellion and female sexual empowerment, the revival of the corset in contemporary high fashion, and its transformation from an item of underwear to outerwear.

Yale University Press

A visually stunningexploration of how contemporary Japanese fashion and visual culture are transforming the way we experience our world Scholars have long acknowledged the significance of the Japanese “fashion revolution” of the 1980s, when avant-garde designers Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons introduced a radically new conception of fashion. But what has happened in the years since then?
Lavishly illustrated, Japan Fashion Nowwill be the first book to explore how Japanese fashion has evolved in recent years. During this time, Japanese pop culture has swept the world, as young people everywhere read manga, watch anime, and play video games. Japan has had a profound impact on global culture, often via new media.
With essays by Valerie Steele (“Is Japan Still the Future?”), Patricia Mears (“Fashion Revolution”), Hiroshi Narumi (“Japanese Street Style”), and Yuniya Kawamura (“Japanese Fashion Subcultures”), Japan Fashion Now explores how the world of fashion has been transformedbycontemporary Japanese visual culture.

Japan Fashion Now

Kawamura, Yuniya

Mears, Patricia

Narumi, Hiroshi

A spectacular showcase of the inimitable style and haute couture collection of fashion icon Daphne Guinness “She is one of the—if not the—most stylish women living,” says designer and film director Tom Ford, speaking of Daphne Guinness, the subject and co-author of this extraordinary book. From her platinum-and-black striped hair to her towering 10-inch heels, her to-die-for couture collection and amazing diamond jewelry, Daphne Guinness embodies the rarified, personal style of a true fashion icon. A designer, editor, model, muse, and stylist, Ms. Guinness is renowned for the way she uses fashion to transform herself. As her friend, the art historian John Richardson puts it: “She is the object of her own creativity. Her persona is her own masterpiece.” 
Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel, Valentino, Azzedine Alaia, and the late Alexander McQueen are among the many great fashion designers whose spectacular garments form part of Daphne Guinness's personal collection of haute couture. But Ms. Guinness is far more than a great couture client, she is also an inspiration to designers because of her fearless personal style. In an extended interview with the curator and fashion historian Valerie Steele, Daphne Guinness explains the origins and characteristics of her style. She also discusses her friendships and collaborations with other creative fashion personalities from the late Isabella Blow to the photographer Steven Klein and the jeweler Shaun Leane. Sumptuously illustrated with both high-fashion photographs and paparazzi shots, the book is a spectacular showcase for the world of Daphne Guinness.

Daphne Guinness

Guinness, Daphne

An astute exploration of the most outrageous shoe designs of the 21st century This fabulously illustrated book explores western culture’s fascination with extravagant and fashionable shoes. Over the past decade, shoe design has become increasingly central to fashion, with fashion companies paying ever more attention to shoes and other accessories. High-heeled shoes, in particular, have become the fashion accessory of the 21st century.
Co-written by one of the world’s leading historians of fashion and an authority on fashion accessories, the book features approximately 150 pairs of the most extreme and ultra-fashionable styles of the past 12 years, including work by such prominent designers as Manolo Blahnik, Pierre Hardy, Christian Louboutin and Bruno Frisoni for Roger Vivier, as well as shoes by influential design houses such as Azzedine Alaïa, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and Prada. Avant-garde styles by up-and-coming designers such as Japan’s Kei Kagami and Noritaka Tatehana are also highlighted.
Shoe Obsession examines recent extreme and fantastical shoe styles in relation to the history of high heels, the role of shoes as a reflection of their wearers’ personality traits, and the importance of shoes in art and exhibitions. The book is lavishly illustrated with full-color photographs of spectacular contemporary shoe designs.

Shoe Obsession

Hill, Colleen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steele, Valerie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Steele, Valerie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steele, Valerie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Black Dress

Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era Through the Jazz Age

Paris Fashion: A Cultural History

Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power

Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power

China Chic: East Meets West

The Corset: A Cultural History

Japan Fashion Now

Daphne Guinness

Shoe Obsession